The Gentleman from the Lotteries Commission

He wore an air of certainty, much as you would a fine hand-made silken hat. And his smile carried with it a gentlemanly presence, his lips gently closed rather than pressed together under the manicured hairs of a whitish, faded red, somewhat pale ginger moustache.

The hairs of this masculine attachment were of the same endowment as the hairs that decorated his medium-sized scalp. They lay softly against his pinkish skin, an oldfashioned, yet dignified part on the left with the ends clipped neatly about the ears, and a centimetre or two above the collar of his white, blue pin-striped shirt, the cuffs of which he kept buttoned about his sturdy-looking wrists.

He stood up in brown polished shoes, evenly spaced within thirty centimetres of each other, to a height of, to use the old measure, just short of six feet. Apair of neatly ironed smoky-grey trousers covered his legs, held up by a slim, dark blue leather belt. In one hand, gripped by a set of strong, yet arguably sensitive fingers was the handle of a small attaché case. Added to this, an identifying photo, strangely blurred, out-offocus, hung to his midriff, suspended by a tape hung about his neck.

It’ll be another five minutes. Sorry, the dark-haired Shop Assistant explained, her pretty red lips shaped by the annoyance of the disruption to her routine, the shine in her black eyes asking for patience from the people who were beginning to queue, Saturday night’s Lotto prize of Twenty Million Dollars a hope in their wishing hands as they stood fingering the forms, marked with their favourite numbers.

Ah, said the gentleman from the Lotteries Commission. I see the computer is falling into line.

Just five minutes, said the dark-haired Shop Assistant, holding up a hand to assure new people joining the queue.

He’s put the winning numbers in, a Joker joked, taking the sting out of the waiting. Is that so, a Man four back from the counter remarked.

The News-agency’s computer has been programmed to produce tonight’s winning numbers, a Woman was overheard to say from her position in the doorway.

A bloke from the Lotto’s here. We’ll all be winners, voices were echoing down the line. And on hearing the news, the prediction, others out for no other reason than to enjoy the difference Saturday morning brings to the usual clamour of the town’s main shopping thoroughfare, joined the line.

Soon the footpath was filled with people four rows wide and growing until it wound around the corner and began to attract people in the park who had brought their families out for a picnic lunch.

And as the word crossed the river, people let go of their rakes and spades and left their gardens. Other people came out through the front doors of their houses to take up a position on the road. And as the traffic came to a standstill, the motorists turned their car engines off and joined them too.

In the warm and sunny air, not a spoken word was heard. Only the forward step and scrape of shoes.